The first day sales number of 50,000 includes pre-sales and was estimated by an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. This appears to surpass the equivalent first day sales for Motorola’s Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Analyst Mike Abramsky’s staff checked 70 retails stores and found 11% of the locations that stocked the device had sold out, according to Matt Hamblen from Computerworld.
This may come as a surprise to many observers in view of the negative reviews that have bombarded Research In Motion (RIM) over the launch of the tablet computer.
Punters feel the software for the PlayBook was not ready yet because native support for email, contact and calendar apps were not available. Such support may only be provided as an over the air update in summer.
In the meantime, only those who own a BlackBerry smartphone can enable the PlayBook to access these basic apps via a Bluetooth connection. The tablet is only available in WiFi configuration with 3G available only in summer.
It is still too early to tell whether the PlayBook will be able to grab any market share from a tablet market seeing an influx of competitors to Apple’s iPad.
Tags: BlackBerry, Galaxy, Motorola, Playbook, RIM, Samsung, Tab, Xoom